Long bones may generally refer to a femur, tibia, humerus, or other long bone of a mammal, such as a human. For the purpose of clarity, the femur bone will be discussed herein as an example of the deficiencies associated with traditional intramedullary nails.
As is known in the art, the thighbone of a person is called a femur and the long, straight part of the femur is called the femoral shaft, the proximal end is known as the hip. When there is a break anywhere along the length of the femoral shaft, it is called a femoral shaft fracture. Fractures near the hip are known as hip fractures. There are many types of fractures, such as transverse fractures, oblique fractures, spiral fractures, commonuted fractures, etc., each of which could be caused by high-energy collisions or low-energy geriatric fragility fractures.
Intramedullary nailing is one type of operation that is able to treat these femoral fractures. This operation typically involves drilling a hole at one end of the femur away from the femoral fracture. Once the hole has been drilled into the femur, a metal nail having a distal portion and a proximal portion is inserted into the hole, with the distal portion of the nail passing the fracture. To prevent movement of the nail, locking of the nail is required.
Historically, this has been accomplished by inserting one or more bicortical bone screws through holes arranged at the distal portion, proximal portion, or along a length of the implanted nail. One disadvantage in this technique is that additional incisions are required to be made on the patient to insert the bicortical bone screws through the holes of the implanted nail to achieve the desired locking. This technique increases the patient's chances of being exposed to infection and, moreover, moves away from the desire for minimally invasive operations. This technique also makes aiming difficult, can be time consuming, and may be error prone.
Therefore, there exists a need to provide an intramedullary nail that can cure some or many of the deficiencies of more traditional systems.